er spots in America where more awful scenes can be
encountered. There are few, however where the combinations are so
delightful or the general views so attractive and varying.

CHAPTER XVIII

INTO THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH.

The Grand Canon of the Colorado--Niagara Outdone--The Course of the
Colorado River--A Survey Party Through the Canon--Experiences of a
Terrible Night--Wonderful Contrasts of Color in the Massive Rocks--A
Natural Wall a Thousand Feet High--Hieroglyphics which have Never been
Deciphered--Relics of a Superior Race--Conjecture as to the Origin of
the Ancient Bearded White Men.

We have already spoken of Niagara as one of the wonders of the world,
and one of the most sought-after beauty spots of America. We will now
devote a few pages to a description of a far more remarkable natural
wonder and to a phenomenon which, were it situated nearer the center of
population, would have long since outclassed even Niagara as a tourist's
Mecca.

Reference is made to the Grand Canon of the Colorado.

Few people have the slightest conception of the magnitude or awfulness
of this canon. It is clearly one of the wonders of the world, and its
vastness is such that to explore it from end to end is a work of the
greatest possible difficulty.

Even in area, the canon is extraordinary. It is large enough to contain
more than one Old World country. It is long enough to stretch across
some of the largest States in the Union. Some of the smaller New England
States would be absolutely swallowed up in the yawning abyss could they,
by any means, be removed to it bodily. An express train running at a
high rate of speed, without a single stop and on a first-class road-bed,
could hardly get from one end of the canon to the other in less than
five hours, and an ordinary train with the usual percentage of stoppage
would about make the distance between morning and evening.

Reduced to the record of cold figures, the Grand Canon is made up of a
series of chasms measuring about 220 miles in length, as much as 12
miles in width, and frequently as much as 7,000 feet in depth.

This marvelous feature of American scenery is very fully described in
"Our Own Country," published by the National Publishing Company. In
describing the canon, that profusely illustrated work says that the
figures quoted "do not readily strike a responsive chord in the human
mind, for the simple reason that they involve something utterly
different